StrangeSox

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 11:43 AM) You can kill someone with a BB gun if they're completely defenseless. The 5.56 round is not going to be fatal unless the target is hit in the chest, neck or head. Being without a gun =! being completely defenseless edit: and the corrollary: being with gun =! always being defended

Seriously though, there's a huge concern about US guns coming into Mexico, not so much the other way around, at least that I've ever read about. Which makes sense, because we have hundreds of millions of guns, dozens of domestic manufacturers and much looser gun laws than Mexico does (guns are essentially banned in Mexico).

A .223 Remington/5.56 NATO is designed to kill. We don't issue our military main battle rifles designed to wound. The 5.56 NATO is a lower-powered round than, say a .30-06 M1 Garand, but the bullet is more likely to tumble and do internal damage whereas the .30-06 will put a hole clean through you. There are criticisms that it isn't good enough at killing on the battle field, but those are criticisms meant to make it more lethal.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 18, 2012 -> 03:40 PM) This is a strong early contender for "craziest s*** you could possibly say about a terrible tragedy," it'll be hard to top http://www.presstv.com/detail/2012/12/18/2...ewtown-carnage/ QUOTE (bmags @ Dec 18, 2012 -> 03:44 PM) And, I bet that dude owns a lot of guns. America. QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 18, 2012 -> 03:45 PM) The comments are even crazier. Israeli Jews are, literally, the Nazis. I don't even so apparently PressTV is an english-language subsidiary of the Iranian government, which explains the nutty anti-semitism. Weird seeing a bunch of English and Americans presenting it, though.

More on the LIBOR Scandal, UBS edition The latter point is key: UBS didn’t just manipulate its own submissions, but actively attempted to manipulate other firms’ submissions as well. And at points the bribery was so explicit as to beggar belief that anybody would ever communicate such things on the record: it would be nice to see some of these criminals go to jail

The US is actually fairly low on that list. I can't remember where I read it now, but sometime in the last week on one blog or another, a crisis hotline operator made the comment that people with a gun call before pulling the trigger while, most times, people take pills before calling. With the gun, you essentially have unlimited time to talk them out of it. With the pills, you need to find out where they are and what they took now because every second is vital to saving their lives.

QUOTE (bmags @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 10:11 AM) I agree. I think the polarization of the parties is not a bad thing. Centrist candidates have largely proven to be more corrupt and absolutely more pork-oriented. That said, I'm a democrat, no qualms about saying this. I disagree with them on a few of their economic items recently, but prefer to pressure members in the party rather than not vote for them, let the opponent win, and lose any progress I might have gained for my preferred policy preferences. I am a democrat on the national level, and forced to be on a local level often just because their bizarre social policies they'll enforce. I don't think the national ideologies make sense on a local level, and we end up just seeing a one party system that becomes very corrupt and enforces policies against interest of greater good. I'm a big supporter of what SS said. It annoyed me NSS's "neither party" thread "where people should be". It's largely patting yourself on the back for no reason. The more important issue imo is epistemic closure, where you literally start rejecting any and all information that runs counter to what you already "know." You can still be a dyed-in-wool radical leftist, a minarchist libertarian, a paleoconservative etc. without falling into that trap.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 10:09 AM) Kinda like immigration, which has now shifted so far to the left anything but blanket amnesty is "you hate brown people!" I disagree with that characterization (the DREAM Act isn't blanket amnesty, and I don't see any major push for such a policy), but that could potentially be an example. If Republicans have held a consistent position on immigration since the post-Reagan amnesty (I don't think they have) while Democrats have run far to the left, advocating total amnesty and open borders (they haven't), then someone who has been politically literate since the 80's wouldn't need to take a 'centrist' or objective look at which policies have merits. They may even have deeper philosophical beliefs that lead them to support one policy (e.g. libertarians and open borders) without needing to consider the alternative at length.

The Disney Extension for copyright is coming up again soon.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 09:53 AM) It also completely misses and ignores everything I said about being a centrist being able to objectively look at both sides and choose one. In the case of deciding whether to kill 100 Jews in a concentration camp...I'd choose the side that was going for zero, in that specific case. But it highlights exactly what I was attempting to highlight...it doesn't tie me into a forced and bad decision simply because I'm on one side or the other. It allows ME to choose what's right/wrong and go that direction. You can objectively look at both (all, let's not fall into the trap of treating every position as a binary choice!) sides and still routinely and regularly support policies that would be considered leftist or liberal or conservative or libertarian. There's nothing inherently good about assembling a mix of those ideologies, and in fact it may be philosophically incoherent. On the other hand, as I said, there's nothing inherently wrong with happening to find yourself there, either.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 09:45 AM) I dunno, I think with issues like immigration or even this fiscal cliff, taking the extreme positions of both parties and finding that middle ground is really the best for everyone. Issues like abortion, perhaps not, but even then you have SOME compromise in the middle from most people (i.e., abortion ok in cases of rape/incest/health concerns). I should clarify that there's a difference between what has to be done in any given political climate to get something passed versus what is actually the best policy. If the 'fiscal cliff' is largely a crisis of our own making and any of the 'compromise' positions currently being floated out there would actively hurt our economy and the most vulnerable members of our society, then it shouldn't be enacted. Hardliners holding to either extreme and preventing a bad deal from being made can be a positive thing, even if I don't agree with that hardline position (see: what the WH was offering over the debt ceiling and the tea party hardliners refusing to vote for it because it included tax increases on the wealthy). On the other hand, as I said before, if one side A stands pat and the other B becomes increasingly extreme, then the definition of what's a centrist compromise and what becomes "extreme" shifts. Suddenly, what might have been perfectly good and reasonable policy from party A gets treated as one end of the extreme, and whatever 'centrist compromise' is reached is driven mainly by extremists in party B. Or, maybe A and B were close originally, but that was bad policy, and now B's extreme shift is to good policy.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 09:47 AM) Yea, well...that worked out well. It didn't, but there still seems to be a much bigger problem of US->Mexico than Mexico->US when it comes to guns.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 09:45 AM) Getting back on topic... We need to enforce some federal laws on the restriction of automatic weapons, the sale of guns, and the tracking of those guns. On top of that, we need stiffer and ENFORCED penalties when these rules are broken, on a federal, state, or local level. These types of restrictions on automatic weapons have been in place for decades and have been very successful. It needs to be extended to all semi-automatic guns if not all guns.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 09:36 AM) Or just provided by the US government. As part of an operation to crack down on illegal Us-to-Mexico arms smuggling that was partially hamstrung by our own gun laws.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 09:35 AM) Yeah I realize you're not for an all-out ban. But at the end of the day your arguments to ban certain types of guns apply logically to all guns. So apparently even you seem to believe that 10 people dead with a shotgun is acceptable. 26 people dead from an automatic rifle is not. How callous of you. If at the end of the day my argument to ban certain types of guns apply logically to all guns, why haven't we seen the logical conclusion of that position since the 1936 National Firearms Act? Or the 1984 changes? I believe that we have a serious problem in our society and that we need better public policy to address it. At the same time, contrary to the strawmen, neither I nor anyone else believes that we can eliminate every act of violence in this country. Even with a complete gun ban and successful total confiscation, we would still have some quantity of weapons smuggled in or hand-made and there would still be a few gun deaths. At the same time, we can look to basically every other stable democracy in the world and see that, yeah, it is possible to enact gun control and have positive results.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 09:39 AM) I'm such a huge fan of your position against Republicans stonewalling everything Democrats have tried to do the last decade. If you're a liberal - never give up on your ideals! Everything conservatives believe is f***ing crazy! If you're a conservative - god, stop being a dick and compromise! I think Republican policies are absolute s*** but I don't believe that the best policies always or even mostly come from 'centrist' compromises. That has nothing to do with our dysfunctional Senate rules, though. Elections should have consequences.

I want to kill zero Jews in concentration camps. They want to kill 100 Jews. A compromise of 50 is good policy! Yeah, it's intentionally absurd, but to illustrate a point. There's nothing inherently good about a centrist position because what is centrist is defined by what's at the ends of the current political spectrum. It's the Overton Window. If one 'side' stands pat for a decade while the other moves to an extreme position, suddenly the 'center' is redefined. There's nothing inherently bad about a position that happens to fall in between where the two parties' current positions are, either. Policy is either good or bad regardless of where it falls on some ill-defined and constantly shifting political spectrum. This is different from tribal cheerleading, which, to be fair, is more what Middle Buffalo referenced.

Source? We have the gun manufacturers and the loose gun laws. Why would they need to be smuggled into here from somewhere with tighter restrictions?

The United States is surrounded by other countries with stricter gun laws and many of the guns used in Mexico are smuggled from the US. Most of the ones seized there are from here.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 09:18 AM) That happens and then you're done complaining about guns right? We enact sane gun control and significantly reduce the gun violence in this country? Yeah, I'm done complaining about guns at that point. You do remember that I was arguing against Balta about guns just last week after the 7C ruling, right?

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 09:18 AM) I think his point, which your attempting to ignore, is that guns are guns...and if the person could do it with a handgun, they can do it with a a rifle/shotgun, and if they still have the rifle/shotgun, it could potentially not reduce anything. Guns are guns, but not all guns are equal for all purposes. Most violent crime is committed with handguns because they are cheap, available and easy to carry and conceal. edit: it wasn't clear in that previous post but I also want meaningful restrictions on assault rifles, something with a good definition of what an "assault rifle" is that doesn't focus solely on cosmetic features.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 09:09 AM) My point was if you ban all of these weapons you want to ban - assault weapons and handguns - but still allow shotguns or rifles, the number might be 10, 15 20, whatever. It's still going to be more than a couple which would put in the same terrible massacre category you're trying to prevent. So we reduce the casualties in mass shootings by 50%+ and reduce the widespread availability of handguns, reducing the non-mass-shootings as well. Sounds good to me.

Not right now they don't. It would be counter-productive and could throw us back into a recession, making the deficit worse than it is now. This is exactly what's been happening in Britain.

Adopting the Chained CPI across the board would effectively be a middle-class tax increase on top of cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Write your Senators and Representatives. You're right in that this was a completely fabricated 'issue' of our own doing in the first place. And like you said, why not just go over the damn cliff if you're getting less tax increases above $250k than you wanted, having to unnecessarily cut entitlement programs and getting little or nothing in return? Obama really does seem to be terrible at negotiating with Republicans, but I'll wait until an official deal is actually presented before completely melting down.

The current rumors are a terrible deal and Obama can get something much better if we go into January. I'll be pissed if there's any unnecessary cuts to social security or medicare, either through age hikes or chained cpi.